On Education

Nick's post on his first visit to Taliesin has given me a reminder about the thoughts I've been developing on Architectural education and my misgivings. While it was Nick's first visit, I've been a staple guest over the past few years. I've attended lectures, know the students and fellows as friends and have participated in the community there many times more than I can discern from memory. One thing that strikes me as positive in their cirriculum is the immense intamacy they have with their environment. In any architectural school, there is a tendency to over-stay your welcome in regards to your health, social life and sleep schedule, and a connection with the people and place you all share is close and taken for granted. But the very roof under which the students at FLLW School is a lesson-- and I mean that not as it was constructed by FLLW, but because they acutally have to help rebuild it. The buildings on the estate are part of the laboratory of the school. It is not necessarily my place to go into the details of politics and problems this may bring up amongst the broader community of people and the preservation-minded and musuem-minded who want things fixed quickly and definitvely, but it is my opinion that the experimentation and lessons the students learn by working on their own place of life has been something missing from an education like my own, for instance.

On a broader level, the idea of learning should very rarley be associated with a museum-like quality. One cannot simply look at ideas under a glass case, nor should one be asked to understand things 'later' or without tactile input. Most career-oriented programs in higher education require some sort of internship, apprenticeship or mentorship program. Architectural school tend to pretend they have this covered with studio work, IDP, and the insistance of learning from work. But non of these have any weight in the physical realm. Architecture needs to actively insist on buidling. Turning out idea-makers does not mean we can not turn out craftsmen. Some have this ability, but it needs to be common. Structure classes cannot be simply statics and codes and politics and the age-old "look it up in your construction companion text." It needs to be classes in wood, in steel, in concrete, in alternative and non-traditional materials. And objects, shelters and stand-up construction should happen. I feel robbed of this, and I only now see that I will have to take it into my own hands to learn the tools of these crafts. No wonder the post-modern world is full of office buildings of post and beam and manufacturer-standed components. Money is the easy answer, but I contest it is the quality of thought and practice of our recent past. We don't know how to build anymore, and builders who are craftsmen or engineers who are passionate are rarely asked to use their whole skill or knowledge, and no one seems to ask them (or are educated in how to ask them) what alternatives and solutions there are to join two things together or make things stand up. We simply don't know. That is a problem.